Homer in the Twentieth Century

Between World Literature and the Western Canon

Edited by Barbara Graziosi and Emily Greenwood

Wide-ranging essays by specialists with a strong interdisciplinary focus

Diversity and originality of the approaches suggests avenues for future study and research

Clear introductory essay explains the significance of the volume and outlines the theoretical challenges involved

Homer in the Twentieth Century

Between World Literature and the Western Canon

Edited by Barbara Graziosi and Emily Greenwood

Description

This collection of essays explores the crucial place of Homer in the shifting cultural landscape of the twentieth century. It argues that Homer was viewed both as the founding father of the Western literary canon and as sharing important features with poems, performances, and traditions which were often deemed neither literary nor Western: the epics of Yugoslavia and sub-Saharan Africa, the keening performances of Irish women, the spontaneous inventiveness of the Blues. The book contributes to current debates about the nature of the Western literary canon, the evolving notion of world literature, the relationship between orality and the written word, and the dialogue between texts across time and space. Homer in the Twentieth Century contends that the Homeric poems
play an important role in shaping those debates and, conversely, that the experiences of the twentieth century open new avenues for the interpretation of Homer's much-travelled texts.

Homer in the Twentieth Century

Between World Literature and the Western Canon

Edited by Barbara Graziosi and Emily Greenwood

Table of Contents

Introduction, Barbara Graziosi & Emily GreenwoodI. Placing Homer in the Twentieth Century 1. Homer after Parry: Tradition, Reception, and the Timeless Text, Johannes Haubold2. Singing across the Faultlines: Cultural Shifts in Twentieth-Century Receptions of Homer, Lorna HardwickII. Scholarship and Fiction 3. Homer among the Irish: Synge, Yeats, George Thompson, and Parry, Richard Martin4. Homer and Joyce: The Case of Nausicaa, Stephen Minta5. Homer in Albania: Oral Epic and the Geography of Literature, Barbara GraziosiIII. Distance and Form 6. Logue's Tele-vision: Reading Homer from a Distance, Emily Greenwood7. Some Assimilations of the Homeric Simile in Later Twentieth-Century Poetry, Oliver Taplin8.
`Homecomings without Home': Representations of (post)colonial nostos (homecoming) in the lyric of Aime Cesaire and Derek Walcott, Gregson Davis9. Theo Angelopoulos in the Underworld, Francoise LetoublonIV. Politics and Interpretation 10. Homer in the Greek Civil War (1946-49), David Ricks11. `Naked' and `O Brother, Where Art Thou?': The politics and poetics of epic cinema, Simon Goldhill12. An American Homer for the Twentieth Century, Seth Schein

Homer in the Twentieth Century

Between World Literature and the Western Canon

Edited by Barbara Graziosi and Emily Greenwood

Author Information

Barbara Graziosi is Senior Lecturer in Classics, Durham University

Emily Greenwood is Associate Professor of Classics, Yale University

Homer in the Twentieth Century

Between World Literature and the Western Canon

Edited by Barbara Graziosi and Emily Greenwood

Reviews and Awards

"This fine collection of essays...covers important elements of the reception of Homer in the twentieth century in text and film.... The Editors have brought together a number of strong essays and made a genuine contribution to the study of Homer."--Phiroze Vasunia, The Classical Review